Awkwards are always goodbye.

The following is an ad-hoc guest blog from former contributing blogger "Zeke."

I have spent the summer admiring Liz for her very determined speech. You can almost watch the wheels turning in her head as she thinks, word by word, of what she will say next (in both English and Arabic). So it was a clear indicator of how worn down we all were when she started her thought with this quote. And that was before we even left Alexandria, before our uncomfortable micro-bus ride to Cairo and before I never got the chance to awkwardly say goodbye.

This is a story about a story. Liz and two companions have their own story to tell, and I cannot describe what they went through. But word of their story (or, the bare details of it) led to a story of our own. This is the story of The Three.

We traveled to Egypt on Paper Tickets. In Washington, we were each given an envelop of tickets. On the flight over, two tickets were torn out of this packet. Despite three sheets still being in this envelop (Cairo>Frankfurt, Frankfurt>DC, receipt), The Three did not grasp the importance of keeping track of -- or of not throwing out -- this envelop. It was about as important as knowing where your passport was at all times.

It should be said that The Three included one of the most organized people on the trip and also the person who was most looking to get out of Egypt. I was sitting in a cafe next to the Gate when rumors started to circulate about "Those Who Had Misplaced Their Tickets." Liz was "The Organized One" (and, let's be honest, she was itching to get home too... not to mention her busy time crunch before she starts school). As our good friend, she became the central character in a long joke: we knew both that she would be able to take eventual razzing, and that she should have known better.

The joking starting to be less funny the closer we got to boarding the plane, and the more unlikely it appeared that The Three would make it on board. Indeed, they did not. As far as we knew, the Program Director had gone home, The Three were without mobile phones, and they were stranded indefinitely at the Cairo Airport. What actually happened will have to come straight from Liz.